The Gordon Place

by Isaac Thorne

  “Pathy!” he shouted. “Pathy! Down here! Help!”

  Shit. Lee Gordon squeezed his son’s eyes shut, retreating into the brain they shared. He shoved at Graham’s consciousness, pressed on it, stifled it until once again he had it submerged in the stream. The dumbass faggoty little asshole had made his decision for him. Now he’d have to play it all by ear and hope that he’d have time alone to work on lining up the doorway to the edges of the portal while Patsy the nosey bitch went for help.

  Lee shuffled Graham’s body around to the foot of what used to be the cellar staircase, Maglite in hand. At the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the white light pouring in from behind, was the figure of an older woman. Patsy, no doubt. She of the lilting Georgian accent and thik-thunk shoes. He pointed the rays of the Maglite briefly at her, confirming her presence, and then shone it on his own (his son’s) face from below.

  “Hi, Pathy!” he said. “Uh, the stairs broke. I fell. I busthed myself up.”

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I see that! We need to get you to a doctor. Your face is all beat up, and your mouth looks like it’s about to split open. Let me call you an ambulance.”

  Lee tried to not clench his teeth. “Just get a ladder, Pathy. I just need a ladder for now.” He watched the head of the silhouette tilt sideways a little. The old bat was having trouble understanding him because of his dumbass kid’s busted fuck of a limp-dick mouth. He was about to try to repeat the demand when she finally processed it all.

  “A ladder!” she shouted. “Of course, of course. I’ll go find a ladder. But don’t you think you need an ambulance or something? They should probably look you over before we get you out.”

  Fuck.

  “No, Pathy. I’m fine. Get the ladder.”

  “Ok,” she replied, sounding a little hurt. “I have a ladder at the B&B that I can go get.” She started to walk away from the cellar door and then turned back. “Oh, I also have a crew outside from Channel 6 News. I tried to tell you about it last night, but you hung up on me. They want to check out some of the more famous haunted locations here in Lost Hollow. I told them that we might be able to get you to give them a tour of this place. You know, because it kind of got a reputation after all those kids started reporting screams coming from it? Since you’re ok and everything, do you think you could show them the place? They only have this weekend.”

  Goddammit.

  “Ok,” he managed to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Ok. We’ll talk later. Just get the ladder, please?”

  “Right, right, right,” came the voice from above. Patsy’s silhouette turned away from the cellar and allowed the door to slam shut behind her. Lee could hear her footsteps thunking away. From somewhere far more distant, he heard her call back to him, “Don’t worry! We’ll be right back!”

  Right, then. He heaved a sigh. Back to work. Maybe his brat’s little act of betrayal had worked in his favor after all. No sheriff’s deputies or EMTs would hassle him today. If the newsies accosted him, he’d probably just tell the Channel 6 team that he wasn’t feeling well enough to give them their tour after all, much less an interview. His mouth was all busted up, and he was famished after having spent a full night, at least, trapped in the cellar. No one would want to be interviewed about a haunted house for a small town puff piece after a night like that, right? Right. He needed time to heal. They’d just have to come back some other day when he felt better, and after he’d gotten his bearings in...well, whatever year it was now.

  Lee Gordon strode back to the portal and the too-much offset door within it. He placed the Maglite on the ground in front of it, making sure it shone at an angle that would not create a shadow of his body over his workspace. With both hands, he pressed hard on the lower left corner of the door, sliding it across its cinder block resting place and into alignment with the wall beside it. The friction made a grating noise, like the sound of a crypt opening in an old vampire or zombie movie. Carefully, he applied the pressure of both hands to the other corner, sliding it closer to alignment as well. It didn’t quite get there. He’d have to try again. Just...carefully.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Staff’s knees cracked like twin shotgun blasts when he raised himself from the ground where he and Afia had been crouched and examining the pawprints that led both into and out from the driveway. Afia stood up beside him, smiling. “Feeling some age creeping into the joints there, Staff?”

  He stretched, placing his hands on each side of his lower back as he did. “Not a particularly comfy bed in my room at Patsy’s. That’s all. I believe I’m actually younger than you, thank you very much.”

  She chuckled at that. Staff bent and dusted away the dry ground that had clung to the fine hairs on his knees, eyeballing the prints again as he did.

  “Are you thinking the black bitch made those?” Afia asked, noting his gaze.

  “I think some kind of dog made them. Maybe even the one that ran out in front of us on our way into town yesterday. The intersection back there at Hollow Creek Road and SR-501 was exactly where we were when we saw it.”

  Afia followed his finger, nodding. “I guess it’s too bad they finally paved this little dead-end road at some point. These tracks must be fresh, at least as far as I can tell. They’re crystal clear. If it was still a dirt road, we might’ve been able to tell for sure if whatever it is had run off in that direction.”

  From inside the house, the distant sound of Patsy Blankenship shouting “Hello? Graham? It’s Patsy!” found its way to their ears.

  “How big do you think this place is?” Staff said. “You’d think he would have heard her by now if he’s inside.”

  “You’d think.”

  He cut his eyes at her, smirking. “How much trouble do you think we’d get in if I just started shooting some B-roll of the exterior? If we’re going to let Patsy and that Beard kid tell the whole mid-state about Lost Hollow’s black bitch, we might as well get some shots of some alleged black bitch pawprints, shouldn’t we?”

  Afia looked doubtful. “I suppose if we just shoot from the road here, where we’re technically not on anything but public property.”

  “I was actually thinking about following the pawprints. The ones that lead onto the property. See how far they go, if they lead anywhere.”

  “Staff—”

  “It would only be for a few minutes, just while Patsy’s inside looking for the constable. Besides, if anyone is going to be charged with trespassing, it’ll be her. She just walked right in there like she owned the place, and now she’s wandering around in it.”

  Afia laughed. “Yeah, she does act like she owns the whole town, doesn’t she? All right. We’ll just follow the pawprints for a bit until we hear yea or nay about the constable’s whereabouts from inside. Just don’t trample on any flowerbeds or anything like that.”

  “You’re worried about flowerbeds here? Look at the yard. Ever see grass as tall as your ass in any place where the homeowner maintained a flowerbed?”

  She scanned the front yard and grinned. “I guess you’re right. Maybe you should just watch out for snakes then.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He hadn’t considered that possibility. But it was autumn now. Snakes were a spring and summer thing, like ticks. At least, he thought they were. “You’re not coming with me?”

  “I think I’m just going to hang out by the truck while you get the shots. That way I can keep an eye out for Patsy. Let me know if you find anything interesting, though.”

  Staff heaved the weighty old school video camera he had retrieved from the back of the S-10 and mounted it on his right shoulder. There was a tripod in the truck as well. He briefly considered using it for additional support if he got tired and needed to put the thing down for a bit. In the end, he chose to leave it behind and rely solely on his own muscle and dexterity to get the shots he wanted.

  “I guess I’m just lucky I don’t have to crank it,” he said to himself. “Damned thing almost dates back to that era.”

  He s
trode past Afia, crouched at the start of the set of pawprints by the edge of the driveway and pressed the Record button. Remarkably, the morning light shining down on the dead-end street was just right for the close-up he wanted. Through the viewfinder, he was able to close in tight on two staggered front paws pointing in the direction of the house. Once that was established, he rotated the viewfinder at a right angle, so that he could look down at it as he dragged the camera along the pawprint trail, inches above it. Stooped at the middle of his back, he held the device’s handle in both hands, his arms stretched to their full length so that the landscape of pawprints disappeared into a vanishing point that was enshrouded in dry and overgrown clumps of Kentucky fescue.

  Staff sidled carefully up the trail, trying to keep the camera steady, one eye on the direction the path was heading and one on the viewfinder. It would have been easier had he convinced Afia to follow the path ahead of him a little pace, so he didn’t need to track it at the same time he was trying to get it on video. He hadn’t thought of that before. Neither had Afia, apparently. And he was already recording. By the time he reached an apparent left turn in the trail’s direction, which happened to occur at the base of the short stack of stairs leading up to the front porch, his forearms were screaming at him. Still cameras and recent video technology was so much lighter than this old thing. He’d need to have another budgetary word with Joanie when they got back to Channel 6. Staff set the bulky contraption down on the lowest tread of the front porch steps and called out to Afia.

  “I’m sorry. I think I’m going to need some help. No sign of any snakes so far. Be careful where you step on your way over. Don’t walk on any of the pawprints, just in case we have to do this again.” From this spot outside the house, he thought he could hear Patsy Blankenship’s wedge heels thik-thunking against the floors of the empty old house. Hopefully, she hadn’t completed her search already.

  “On my way,” Afia called. In a few seconds she had skipped along the pawprint trail that had taken him nearly two minutes to shoot. She did not step on a single one.

  “Thanks. See where the tracks take a left turn here at the porch steps? If you follow them out as far as they go, or at least until they make another turn, it’ll be easier for me to shoot this length of the trail. I won’t have to search for the trail if I can keep you in my periphery. I’ll keep your feet out of the shot as best as I can.”

  “Interesting.”

  He looked up at her. “Well, it’s the best idea I can come up with since I don’t have a skater or a dolly in our little stash of equipment in the truck and Joanie won’t buy me any modern equipment.”

  “No, not that. I mean it’s interesting to me the way the pawprints go sideways after the porch steps. You haven’t been this way yet. Look.”

  Staff left the camera where he’d set it on the bottom porch step and followed her line of sight. She was right. The pawprints at the edge of the house no longer formed a linear direction. Instead, at the base of the structure, there was a complete set of four pawprints pointing toward the house. They reappeared every few inches along the mortared stacks of cinder block that made up the exterior of the home’s foundation. Between them were elongated tramplings and scratches, as if a dog had strafed alongside the outside edge of the house like a character in a first-person shooter video game instead of walking parallel to it. A few feet to the left of the front porch stairs, the trail turned a corner, out of view.

  “What do you think it was up to?”

  “She,” Afia corrected him. “If we’re going to use this for the black bitch story then ‘it’ needs to be ‘she.’”

  “Right. What do you think she was up to?”

  “Well, every dog I’ve ever known likes to sniff things, especially when they’re outside. It looks to me like she might have been sniffing along these blocks.”

  “Makes sense. Changes my shot a little, but makes sense.” He snagged the camera from the front porch steps and aimed it toward the front of the house as if it were the dog’s nose. Afia strode to the left wing corner and waited as Staff strafed alongside the wall, recording each set of pawprints up to the edge. He was about to stand upright again when Afia spoke.

  “They continue the same way around this side.” She followed the tracks ahead a few paces and stopped, crouching in front of an area of cinder block foundation that, from Staff’s spot at the corner, looked a little bit more exposed below the backfill line than the rest of the place, like the root of a tooth that had appeared from behind a receding gum line. “Shoot the rest of the prints up to where I am and then come take a look at this.”

  “On it.” He rushed a bit while tracking the last few prints that led up to Afia’s position alongside the house. He might regret that later, but figured he had shot enough of the trail to be able to cut together some interesting visuals for the more boring exposition portions of the interviews they would conduct later that day. He shut off the recorder and set the unit down beside him as he crouched next to Afia in the overgrown grass. “What’s up?”

  “Take a look. I think our canine buddy might have decided that this was the best place to dig out whatever she’d been smelling. There’s a little hollowed out spot of earth against the foundation here.”

  Staff snickered. “Maybe she was chasing a rabbit or something.” Near the edge of the void, one corner of a bottom row cinder block appeared to be missing entirely. To Staff, the hole looked a bit like the archway holes Jerry Mouse made in the walls of Tom Cat’s house in those old syndicated cartoons he’d watched as a kid. It was more ragged than Jerry’s holes, of course, but it did kind of have that shape. He fingered the edge of it. “I’ll bet a little rabbit managed to find an escape in there and our hound was trying to get it out.”

  “Probably right,” Afia said, standing up again. “I wonder if this used to be some kind of storage area, though. The blocks don’t have any mortar between them here...or here.”

  Staff hadn’t noticed it before, but where the dog or whatever it was had apparently been digging stood a two-block-wide, two-block-high square of cinder blocks that were mortared together at both the horizontal and vertical axes. On every side of this structure except for the bottom, which rested directly atop the masonry below it, was a black void. As far as Staff could tell, it wasn’t fastened at the bottom, either. It was just a cinder block rectangle that sat blocking an open hole in the foundation and attached to nothing. Well, it was rectangular except for that mouse house-shaped hole in the lower right corner of it, anyway.

  “Huh.” He scratched his chin. “Some houses have crawl spaces. Maybe this used to be an entrance to one but someone doesn’t want it to be the entrance anymore. Wonder why they didn’t just put a crawl space door there with a lock on it?”

  “Beats me. It’s not like you can see it from the road or anything. Nothing faces this side of the house except rows and rows of trees. Looks like it continues around to the backyard as well.”

  “Yeah.” Staff scanned the forest that lined the edge of the property behind them and led into the backyard. That must have been where the Beard kid saw whatever it was he saw through the window. He turned back to the cinder block and brightened. “Hey, Afia, what would you give me to stick my hand in this mouse hole and feel around a little? Who knows? Maybe we’ll come up with some hidden treasure, or a dead body. Imagine how that would look on the news!”

  She grinned at him. “Not unless Constable Gordon gives us the go-ahead on that, Geraldo. We’re guests here, remember? It’s not a fishing expedition.”

  He pouted theatrically, then stood up beside her. “Spoilsport. I’m sorry. I’m getting bored out here. There’s only so much we can do while we’re waiting on Patsy.”

  Then, as if on cue, they heard the older woman shouting from somewhere around the front porch. “Don’t worry! We’ll be right back!” There was urgency in her voice.

  Staff and Afia’s eyes met. “Uh oh,” he said, then lifted the camera from the ground beside him and fol
lowed closely on Afia’s heels as she sprinted around the corner of the house to meet up with Patsy. The older woman was standing with her right hand against a column beside the front porch steps and her left clutching the center of her chest.

  “Oh, dear,” she said and looked up just in time to see Afia and Staff approaching. “Mr. Gordon seems to have taken a nasty tumble down a set of stairs. He’s in the cellar. He’s been there since last night. He wants us to bring him a ladder so he can climb out.”

  “He can’t walk up the stairs?” Staff asked.

  “Oh my, no. That old staircase pretty much just crumbled away beneath him. There’s no way out of there now but by a rope or a ladder.”

  “Is he all right?” Afia asked. “Should we call an ambulance or something?”

  “He says he’s fine. He didn’t want me to call anyone. He’s having some trouble talking, though. It looks like he busted up his face pretty bad in the fall. Maybe I can just take him to a doctor when we get him out of there. Lost Hollow’s health insurance for town government isn’t the greatest. Residents don’t want to have to pay extra taxes for it. An ambulance might be too expensive on his salary, especially if it has to take him all the way to the hospital over in Hollow River.” She sighed and shook her head. “I have an extension ladder at the B&B that we can use to get him out of there. I just need a way to get it here. I don’t think it’ll fit in my car. We might be able to get it in the back of your truck if I could get a strapping young gentleman to drive me back to my place and help me lift it.” She batted her enormous eyes at Staff in faux bashfulness. Staff thought but did not say, that she suddenly reminded him more than passingly of Robin Williams all dressed up in elderly nanny drag in Mrs. Doubtfire. Afia, meanwhile, faked an itchy nose, putting a hand over her own mouth to disguise her grin.